


Kill Switch

by casselfyre



Category: Captain America, Marvel, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Avengers - Freeform, Drama, Gen, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 06:13:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1540592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casselfyre/pseuds/casselfyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fictional account that takes up where the movie 'Captain America, The Winter Soldier' left off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes this has a dark beginning, bear with me.   
> Thank you for reading, and remember  
> encouragement and kudos satisfy my muse and inspire me to write more.

 

 

 

………………. _‘It seems no one can help me now,_

_I'm in too deep there's no way out,_

_this time I have really lead myself astray’_ …………..

 

 

He stared in the cracked mirror at a face he did not recognize, the single bare bulb overhead cast his eyes into black shadow making him appear eerily like a skull.

 

‘I _can_ do this, I must.’

 

The pocketknife was held loosely in his right hand, the longer blade open and locked. He leaned lightly on the rust discolored sink in the closet sized bathroom of the cheap motel room.

 

‘I am a ‘loose end’ and that is not allowed, a dog without a home. I can do this.’

 

With the decision made, the movement is precise; his right hand comes up and the honed blade slides through the skin of his lower right eyelid mere millimeters from the bone of the eye socket. He catches his breath with an audible hiss and feels the tip of the blade graze the eyeball itself. The blade buries deep and the pain is immense, but no more sound comes from the man at the mirror.

 

The blade touches the back of the eye socket and his left hand comes up and holds the eyelids open, then with a subtle turn of the right wrist his eye is out and on his cheek, blood warm upon his skin. He turns the knife a final time severing the optic nerve, and the enucleation is complete.

 

Gritting his teeth against the pain, fingers wet with his own blood and unwonted tears he manages to remove the left eye in the same manner, dropping the slippery knife into the blood spattered sink.

 

Leaving the mess, he gropes his way to the bed and sits, finding the bottle of vodka on the nightstand and guzzling a good portion of it. His head hits the pillow and a last thought echoes through his aching head.

 

‘I am no asset.’

 

 

…………’ _Runaway train, never goin' back,_

_wrong way on a one-way track,_

_seems like I should be getting somewhere_

_somehow I'm neither here nor there’_ ………………

 

 

The last two months had turned Steve’s world upside down. He had been on light duty while healing, but his main focus now was finding ‘Bucky.’ In the aftermath of the clash with Hydra, the Winter Soldier had seemingly disappeared completely, leaving Rogers with scant information on the whereabouts and why of James Barnes.

 

Now he sat in front of a computer at S.H.I.E.L.D. scanning through Google news for some clue as to where his best friend might be. Suddenly the klaxons started to sound and an alert popped up on the computer screen.

‘Intruder alert in sector 16’

 

Rogers stood, Sector 16 was a records room mostly filled with computers, but with several rows of steel cabinets for paper files. He started that way, running through halls bustling with activity.

 

The elevators were full and a small crowd waited for the next car. Steve sprinted for the stairs and made for the roof. He had just made the next landing when the door was thrown open and Clint Barton joined him compound bow with full quiver in one hand he briefed Cap as they ascended the stairs.

“Camera’s show a single intruder wearing a full face mask, not doing much but tearing the place apart.”

 

“Any idea how he got in?”

 

“Not yet, maybe the ventilation system, or could have rappelled down the side of the building.”

 

A huge crash sounded above them and they put on a burst of speed, throwing open the fire door to a one-man whirlwind of destruction. The room had been vented to the outside with a good section of wall gone. A man dressed in black had his back to them and heaved a large section of steel filing cabinet out the hole. His shoulder length chestnut hair swung wildly in the wind and rain blowing in from outside.

 

Steve recognized him before he spun around, “Bucky!”

 

The tactical mask he wore obscured every bit of his humanity, giving him an insectile appearance. He stepped lithely to one side and grabbed another set of filing cabinets and tossed them out to plummet to the pavement far below.

 

Rogers stepped forward and held out a hand, “Bucky, Stop!” It came out sounding a bit more like a plea than a command.

 

In response, the Winter Soldier charged him, driving a shoulder into Cap and smashing him hard into a wall. Barton circled, trying to get an angle for a shot, the wicked edge of the broadhead catching the light and glittering coldly.

 

Two armed security guards, guns drawn entered the room, “Let him go! Get on the ground!”

 

At their shouts, James “Bucky” Buchanan let go of Steve and pivoted on one foot, kicking one guard into the hall, his weapon discharging harmlessly into the ceiling. In a smooth continuation of momentum the Winter Soldier grabbed the second guard’s gun arm and swung him across the room and out the gaping hole in the wall. The man’s long scream followed him down.

 

That gave Barton just the opening he needed and he released the drawn arrow, instantly nocking a second and pulling it back, never taking his eyes off the intruder.

 

“NOOOOO!” Roger’s shout was a cry of denial.

 

Bucky, had frozen, hands at his sides, staring at the length of graphite arrow and fletchings protruding from his chest. He made a low, strangled sound that almost sounded like soft laughter. Then his knees bent and he slid to the floor in a heap.

 

Roger’s scrambled to him, wincing at the angle and location of the arrow, then pulled away the tactical mask. Barnes was a pallid gray color, cheeks sunken in, eyes closed, even as he watched a trickle of blood ran from one of Bucky’s nostrils.

 

“You’ll be fine Bucky, I’ve got you.”

 

The prone man writhed in pain and smiled, baring blood filmed teeth. More people were charging into the room, but they did not matter.

 

Steve stared at the pale face of his childhood friend. He had finally found James, and now it seemed he would lose him again. It couldn’t get any worse.

 

Then Bucky coughed weakly and his closed eyes opened, but his blue eyes were gone, only raw, empty sockets remained. He spoke softly, a clear note of triumph in his voice before going limp in Cap’s arms.

“Not…… an…… asset.”

 

 

…………………………… “ _Bought a ticket for a runaway train,_

_like a madman laughing at the rain,_

_little out of touch, a little insane,_

_it's just easier than dealing with the pain”…_ ………………………

 

 

To be continued.

 

I own nothing. I wrote this purely for fun and no monetary gain.

Thank you to Dave Pirner for writing these appropriate lyrics to Soul Asylum’s ‘Runaway Train.’

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Steve stands in the gallery behind the glass. He alternates between watching the scans on the heads-up display and the fight below him played out under the hard glare of surgical lights.

  
It actually is a play of sorts, the heavy stainless steel table a stage, the masked surgeons the co-stars; nurses and orderlies play their supporting roles. Yet most plays are not watched... by guards armed with advanced, high-powered weaponry.  
  
The star of the play is heedless to it all. Most of his body is draped, covering the restraints that hopefully render him harmless and motionless. Some kind soul has even bandaged those eyes, white gauze wrapped round and round his head, hiding those awful raw craters.  
  
Translucent bags of deep red blood and golden platelets hang at his left arm, trying to replenish the blood that is filling Bucky’s chest cavity. Oxygen feeds his remaining laboring lung and straining heart. Ice packs are placed along his body, lowering his core temperature in an attempt to slow the bleeding.  
  
Barton’s arrow was an almost perfect shot, the only way it could have done more damage would have been if it had actually bisected the heart itself. Instead it has sliced and severed multiple small and medium veins and arteries, collapsed a lung and one wicked triangular razor inset rests snugly against the aorta. Rogers knows all of this because he has the 3-D image in front of him.  
  
His friend is failing, blood is pouring out faster than can be replaced. Cracking his chest open might move the firmly lodged broadhead the fraction of an inch needed to lay open the aortic wall, causing James to bleed out almost instantly.  
  
Clint had apologized earlier, noting rightly that he had to take the shot. Steve understood the Winter Soldier had to be stopped after taking down two men in a matter of seconds. Rogers divided the entity into two sections ‘The Winter Soldier’ and ‘Bucky.’ His friend would not have pitched a man out of a building to certain death, not Bucky. Barton had done as he was trained to do, what he was supposed to do.  
  
Movement below caught Rogers’s eyes, it was Tony Stark scrubbed, gloved, masked and gowned, examining the cybernetic limb that now replaced James’s left arm. Steve frowned slightly, Stark seemed more interested in the machinery than the man saddled with it.  
  
Bruce was down there too, front and center stage, looking at the angle of the heavy graphite arrow where it disappeared into the chest wall. One of the monitors started beeping in alarm and he stepped over to look at the various readings then moved quickly to a red phone mounted on the wall. The conversation must have been brief and to the point for about a minute later an announcement came over the PA in the room below. Steve recognized the voice immediately, it was Nick Fury giving the command, then repeating it tersely.  
“All non-essential personnel are to clear the operating room immediately. I repeat, all non-essential personnel are to leave the operating room now.”  
  
In just moments the room was cleared, leaving only Stark, Banner, and two surgeons in the room, even the guards had left the room. Then with a slight hiss, a steel barrier came down inside the glass wall obscuring Steve’s view of the room, at the same moment the graphics display went black.  
  
No, no, no……not again.  
  
He sprinted out the door and down the flight of steps, sliding to a stop before the imposing figure waiting outside the double doors of the surgery suite. Fury shook his head.  
“No, you cannot go in there right now.”  
  
Steve stared at the man, “What are you doing? Is Barnes dying?”  
  
Fury’s good eye stared steadily back. “He is dying. We are trying to save him, but it is a bit above your clearance level Steve.”  
  
Rogers held his stare and replied calmly, “Tell me, or I walk.”  
  
The statement made Fury sigh, “Banner and Stark have been working with the top minds in nano-technology and gene modifications used to enhance healing. The field has come a long ways.”  
  
He stepped to one side, turned and peered through the small vertical window in his door before continuing, watching what was happening inside the operating room. “That double unit they just hung for your friend is a chimera cocktail of nanobots, antigens, and other elite things I will never understand. The needle required for this is so large that it feeds directly into Barnes’s subclavian vein so it hits the heart and injury site instantly.  
  
Steve’s brow creased and he stepped up to look through the narrow window in his side of the door. An opaque black unit of fluid was hanging on a second stand, with black tubing running to Bucky.  
“Why is it black?”  
  
“The chimera is not black, just the packaging. One of the controls on the nanogenics is making the nano-robots susceptible to UV light. Like vampires they don’t like sunlight much and gives us some form of control over them.”  
  
Steve saw that Bucky’s face was terrifyingly pale from loss of blood.  
“What do the……..what do they do?”  
  
Fury was still watching the activity in the room, “The ‘bots will stop the bleeding, helping stabilize your friend. They will drain the blood from his lung and his vitals will stabilize. The whole blood and platelets will replenish some of what he has lost. Then they will remove the arrow and Barnes will live. His vitals are getting stronger already. The rest of the chimera cocktail will enhance his healing.”  
  
“Do they know what happened to his eyes?”  
  
Fury did not answer for a time, and Rogers started to think he had not heard the question or refused to answer it. The reply, when it came was softly spoken.  
  
“Steve, it looks like he might have done it to himself. We have no idea why, but there is something more you need to know, preliminary scans show a very disturbed brain with damaged and dead areas. Part of it may be due to the initial fall injury, but most was done deliberately, over time.


End file.
